Apple would not exist were it not for the opportunity and skill they found in the United States. I pay one third of my salary in taxes so there is absolutely no reason Apple can't pay even 15%.
They are not legally required to pay more than they have, and to expect them to pay more than their obligated to is flatly ridiculous.
So we should pay for what Apple does but Apple should not pay for what the governments that facilitate them do. Got it.
1. Apple pays more than than anyone in the world. Period. How much do you pay in their shadow?
2. They are not legally required to pay more than they have, and to expect them to pay more than their obligated to is flatly ridiculous.
3. A proper government which secures an environment that abolishes the initiation of physical force from human affairs, so that people can live life according to their nature, doesn't cost anywhere near what our government costs. Apple pays WAY more than their part (how much did you pay vs them? What insignificant
fraction of a percent?) and to suggest that they owe you something because they were better at production than you were is unbelievably collectivist, and inexcusable, given the historical examples of how that type of thinking ends up.
Politicians are not stupid...Who do you think puts and keeps in paler the laws they exploit to save on tax? Yes that's right..the politicians.
Then in return for 'helping' the companies, they then get jobs in those same firms when they no longer are a politician.
There is never any interview or the need to fill in forms etc, just turn up and the job is yours.
Even when they have no experience.
I mean in the UK we had George Osbourne who used to be the chancellor of the exchequer and then suddenly became the editor of a newspaper despite having no experience at all!
There are many more examples like that in the UK and US.
Politicians and their corporate paymaster friends run the country for their own benefit.
Yeah, government should remain completely separate from economic affairs. If there's no political pull to sell, there won't he any buyers, there won't be Crony Socialism, there won't be rules distorted in favor of some and not others.
Fact remains though, Apple paid what it legally owed, and to expect them to pay more is pretty ridiculous. Especially when they have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to maximize profitability.
Here's the thing to remember though: profit is unspent/uncirculated money. Economic growth only happens when there's an increased amount of money being spent/circulated, so there's a downside to record profits in the corporate world.
What happens with that unspent money? It gets deposited into banks, it gets invested in short term, liquid securities, etc. The money goes somewhere. The bank will lend it out, the person who sold the short term liquid security will go out and invest the capital, etc. Money always goes somewhere, and the more
savings there is in a economy the more
productive it becomes over time, because there's more savings available to finance loans for machinery, small business startups/fund new innovative ideas more cheaply, etc. Consumption is the chronic ill which is constantly trying to strangle our modern economies.
This view is harmful and complete trash.
There are many people that do productive things in society - indeed, Apple's engineers are obviously the source of its wealth and they pay their taxes, don't they?
What's more, this argument negates any of the productive things politicians can actually do that benefit these companies in the first place.
I imagine Apple doesn't sell many iPhones in failed states like Somalia, do they? The state maintains a legal order that allows for anyone to do productive things in the first place in safety and security. If some entity doesn't pay taxes, that's not only unfair to every entity that does pay taxes and gives them an unfair advantage, but it is harmful to society.
Apple benefits in countless other ways too - think of all the state-funded education their employees have benefitted from, all the healthcare they get, all the benefits they get, all the publicly funded infrastructure they rely on etc etc. If the state didn't tax anyone that did a productive things, there'd be far fewer people able to do them in the first place.
My view is not harmful, nor is it complete trash. In fact, it's true.
First of all, Corporations don't pay taxes, their customers do. If you've got a market opportunity which will yield x% of profit, and then you add a 30% tax on it, or whatever, they're just going to adjust their prices accordingly. It makes no sense to say that a corporation is just going to eat a tax, if the tax didn't exist, the margins would widen, and they would cut prices to narrow them back down, or they would be stupid and they wouldn't cut prices, and it would incentivize competitors that much more to come in and grab a piece of that margin, which would drag prices down.... All of this is historically demonstrable. Profits are not magic, they are a function of supply, and demand, and margins which are too thick for the particular complexity of the product which is being sold, will encourage competition, and wipe out the margins. Taxes are paid by the consumer, and they're a sneaky little ploy used by the politicians people laud.
The overwhelming majority of politicians today are anti-business, and pro regulation, and do far more harm than good to the productive capacity of companies. The basic purpose of government is to secure people's right to be free of the initiation of force, and doing this does not cost trillions of dollars a year, and certainly does not involve peddling influence or favors to some companies or people vs. others. This is the majority of what they do, and it is appalling and inexcusable. The less funding they get, the better.
Somalia is not the United States on so many different levels, and to suggest that the root of the problems in Somalia is their underfunded government, or lack thereof, demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of their particular situation, and the requirements of human nature more broadly. On a side note, it is certainly true that the State secures an environment for people to live freely, and that is it's proper function. It is also true that rational people
do value a government which protects their right to be free of the initiation of physical force, and act freely. As your (and many others') advocacy for taxation would suggest, you would be one and others would certainly fund a government to do exactly that. There would not be many people, however, who would hand over funds for government investment in green energy, or welfare programs, or entertaining lobbying efforts of companies, etc. and that's a damn good thing.
Furthermore, Apple has paid ALL of the taxes it is legally obligated to pay, and to suggest that they aren't paying them, or are obligated to pay more than they're legally required is completely ridiculous. Especially when you look at the
garbage that this government
wastes it's money on, and the incredible amount of damage it's already inflicting on the country, and it's economy.
State monopolization of the education sector is the single most damaging thing that ever happened to this country. Students (not unlike myself) commonly learn the relevant things they know
in spite of what is put out there in schools,
not because of it. The government schools are an epistemological nightmare, which get both content,
and method wrong, and this is, in no small part, responsible for the degradation of the ability of people to think and integrate concepts. Just look at the 3 people we had running for president, and the one who actually
won and tell me that isn't the case.
The government doesn't give people healthcare that it doesn't;t take from somewhere else first, and it's because of the government that I can't afford "affordable healthcare" anymore. Another inexcusable, and monstrous intervention. Public infrastructure..... Again, government has no business doing anything but protecting rights. Period. and by the way, 1. The roads are already there, how long are we seriously going to cite them as an expense that needs to be paid for, they've ben there for decades? and 2. They're constantly falling apart anyway. Look at wha the private sector produces in the form of a super computer in your pocket, and tell me with a straight face that they couldn't do roads better. Can you imagine what an iPhone would look like if the government made it? How much more complicated is an iPhone than a piece of tar o some dirt?
Let's not pretend that the services which the government forcibly, and unjustly monopolized, wouldn't still be valuable to people if the government didn't monopolize it, and wouldn't be provided as a service by the private sector in that instance.
I just had a mental image of Tim running on rooftops in Medellin
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wtf??? That's some sick stuff.
